The Domino Effect (NHB Modern Plays)

By Fin Kennedy

A silent girl finds her voice, and her mother, when a mysterious East End antiques dealer teaches her how small actions lead to big effects, and how to master the law of unintended consequences.
The Domino Effect – a five-star hit at the 2014 Edinburgh Festival Fringe – is an ensemble play for teenage performers created by award-winning playwright Fin Kennedy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Jun 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781780016153

Book preview

Fin Kennedy

THE DOMINO EFFECT

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

THE DOMINO EFFECT

Author’s Note

Original Production

The Domino Effect

Endnotes

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Fin Kennedy

I first experimented with writing for an ensemble in my very first play for teenagers, East End Tales, a series of dramatic poems about inner-city life, written for multiple voices and inspired by articles in East London newspapers. At the time (2004) I was writer-on-attachment at Half Moon Young People’s Theatre, developing my first professional play for young audiences for a national tour. That play, Locked In, involved only three actors, largely because they were all professionals who needed paying – and also because the entire show had to fit into the back of a van. East End Tales, however, was the result of a short residency in an East London school, into which Half Moon sent me as part of my own professional development as I learned to write for their target age group.

Writing a play for young people themselves to perform, as opposed to professional actors performing for an audience of young people, is a very different thing. For a start, in the former, large casts are actively encouraged so that as many people as possible can take part. This presents challenges as well as opportunities. Maintaining coherent storylines and meaningful character arcs for ten, fifteen or even twenty named roles is not always possible, especially when the overall running time is unlikely to exceed forty-five minutes. Then there is the nature of rehearsals stretching over weeks or even months, and the likelihood of cast changes due to teenagers’ busy lives, clashes with other projects or just general dropouts.

One technique I developed to deal with these variables is a choral writing style, which uses nameless narrators to introduce and guide the telling of the story. This can accommodate anything from two to twenty narrators in the chorus. Often the language is in a playful, lyrical style, which makes the lines easier to learn – the idea is that everyone learns the lot, so that in the event of cast changes (or drying on stage) others can cover the lines. This form also plays to one of teenagers’ great strengths – acknowledging the audience and telling them a story directly. Young actors are naturally good at this, and audiences love its conspiratorial nature. Other, named parts can and do emerge, but the chorus of narrators is never far away.

The three plays contained in this volume are therefore for large casts of young actors aged thirteen to nineteen. Cast sizes can vary due to this ensemble style, but the minimum is about eight (for The Domino Effect, though it can be done with more), and the maximum about sixteen (for The Dream Collector). Fast is more fixed as it uses named characters throughout, and tries to do justice to giving each of them a journey, but even so it can be performed with either nine or twelve actors (depending on whether the four older parts double or are separated out). Ensemble casting can also include non-speaking parts, who can use physical theatre, dance and music to create stylised representations of the world of the play. In this respect, the only upper limit on cast size is the imagination of the company taking the play on.

Each script in this